Ritual Discourse in Role-Playing Games

Introduction

Theoretical analysis of RPG's remains largely cut off from other
theoretical discourses, a situation that tends of itself toward
sterility. Two reasons for this isolation predominate. First, RPG
theorists come from a wide range of educational backgrounds, and as
such have no shared body of theoretical models or discourse on
which to draw. Second, RPG theory hopes to serve a constructive
function, rather than a purely analytical one: where the
anthropologist for example traditionally understands herself as
necessarily exterior to the people and situations she analyzes, the
RPG theorist wishes to employ the results of his analysis to
improve his own gaming.

The former difficulty need not concern us unduly. So long as
theoretical models from outside current RPG discourse receive
adequate formulation and explication in RPG terms, only an a
priori hostility to other theoretical constructs would dismiss
them out of hand. It is worth considering that such hostility does
appear mutual -- that is, much RPG discourse formulates itself in
opposition to academic theoretical discourse, while many academics
continue to express disdain and scorn if not outright hostility for
role-playing games as an activity -- but resolution of this can
only come about in a historical situation as yet hard to imagine.
Thus I shall set the issue aside, stating only that I intend to
explain fully whatever theoretical constructs I deploy.

The second problem, however, inheres in the nature of RPG's
themselves. A purely theoretical analytical model of RPG's, i.e.
one without any practical application whatever, will generally be
received poorly, if at all, within RPG communities. Indeed, even
RPG theorists who go to considerable lengths to formulate the
practical implications of their models are sometimes derided as
airy pseudo-intellectuals. Fortunately, some recent RPG
publications by members of the theoretical community have received
accolades,[1] and this will presumably have
the long-term salutary effect of legitimizing theoretical work
within the hobby at large.

At the same time, analyses of RPG's have come to formulate
practical, essential divisions and categories, and argued that
these may be unbridgeable. For example, Ron Edwards's tripartite
GNS model rests upon the notion that the three categories must
remain discrete in order to avoid paradigmatic clash and attendant
misunderstandings among players, leading in turn to poor play. That
is, a group of players with strongly Narrativist tendencies should
be wary of playing a strongly Gamist-structured game, or
introducing into the group a player with such an approach. While
"hybrids" -- games that effectively serve more than one of the
three major play-types -- are conceived as possible, a central
point for Edwards is that Narrativist-oriented play is not
well-suited to Gamist-oriented games, and that groups who attempt
such may need to revise the game extensively to fit their needs.
Similarly, a single player who cannot conform to the paradigmatic
norms of the group in which she plays will probably find herself
continually at odds with other players, leading to social conflict;
this player would be best advised to find another game.[2]

In his recent article "Story and Narrative Paradigms in
Role-Playing Games,"[3] John Kim argues that
underlying such categories we find two approaches: "Collaborative
Storytelling" and "Virtual Experience." These tend, like Edwards's
categories, to remain divided. In what Kim calls "Paradigm Clash,"
we find a naturally-occurring conflict between perspectives:

To the storytelling point of view, the
experiential view seems to result in an unnecessarily limited set
of techniques. . . . Experiential play may also seem passive,
letting events happen rather than actively controlling them. . . .
[Conversely,] To the experiential point of view, storytelling play
seems to be creating a product for a nonexistent reader. . . .
Experiential players faced with storytelling play may complain
about breaking suspension of disbelief, or lack of depth.

Conflict arising from disjuncture, narrative or otherwise, is
not only theoretical. Most gamers have experienced it, and one
great strength of Edwards's model (derived from the earlier
Threefold Model developed in the Advocacy newsgroup[4]) is to emphasize recognition and classification as
means to avoiding the problem. In both his and Kim's models,
players and groups who recognize their preferences in a categorical
sense can select games to fit their desires, or revise them so,
leading to enjoyable play with a minimum of fuss and trouble.

While I support this general constructive point, and do not
presently wish to challenge the classification itself (a
much-contested issue), I suggest that a hard-line division within
analysis leads toward weaknesses in a general understanding and
formulation of how RPG's really function. By drawing on some
theoretical models outside of RPG's, I would like to propose a more
unified model of RPG narrativity.

A word about practicality: I do not, in the present article,
formulate the practical implications of this model for game design
or play. I do not see this as a weakness in itself: if the model
serves analytically, it can have synthetic value. But the two
operations have at least a notional distinction, and can operate
well in isolation. If theory must face a practical proof-critique,
then all analysis is already crypto-synthesis; logically speaking,
there is thus insufficient distance postulated to ensure the
validity of the analysis. In short, without the ability to
distinguish at least heuristically between theory and practice,
theoretical work can never have real logical force, lending weight
to the criticisms mentioned at the outset.

A further point: I intend to propose a ritual model for RPG
play, based upon recent understandings of ritual within the
academic discourses of anthropology, sociology, and history of
religions. This model would appear to fall squarely into the common
discourse of analogy as theory, of proposing that RPG's are "like"
something else in order to help emphasize a point otherwise
unclear. Such analogical reasoning is founded upon an essential
methodological principle: the analogy is not identity. Thus
response to the proposal is constrained to two related moves. On
the one hand, one may move to expand the analogy, picking up
additional aspects of the metaphorized object or activity and
further relating them to RPG's; on the other, one may move to limit
the analogy, demanding that the metaphor not be taken to the point
of absurdity.[5]

Some find this mode of analysis useful, primarily in a creative
sense. If one "gets" the analogy, in its logical extension and
intension, one thinks about the hobby in a somewhat new way,
perhaps leading to new creative engagement with design or play. But
if one does not "get" the analogy, the tendency, naturally, is to
dismiss it as unhelpful, or to reformulate it endlessly until one
does "get it." Either way, the reason to analyze such a metaphor is
generally synthetic, to create new ways of engaging with the hobby.
In other words, the proposal of yet another analogy serves no
analytic function.

In proposing a ritual model of RPG's, I do not wish to add
another analogy to the lists. I do not mean that RPG play is
like ritual at all; I mean that it is ritual.
Therefore classical and recent tools of ritual analysis apply fully
to RPG's, for analytical purposes, for making sense of RPG's
as something other than an entirely isolated hobby, indeed for
seeing RPG's as a human cultural product not particularly
distinctive to modern society. If to some this seems a claim that
RPG's are not special and extraordinary, I suggest on the contrary
that this grants to RPG's a legitimacy and "specialness" attendant
upon their roots in wider humanity and culture.[6]

Ritual

An obvious first step in proposing this model is the formulation
of a definition of ritual. Unfortunately, perhaps, such definitions
have been the focus of extensive debate for more than a century
now, with no clear end in sight. More models have been proposed of
what ritual "is" than many readers might believe. I have no
intention of summarizing this whole history; I will instead simply
propose a starting-point.

The above-mentioned disjuncture between "Collaborative
Storytelling" and "Virtual Experience" parallels, in a number of
respects, two recent emphases in ritual theory.

Virtual Experience correlates well with Ronald Grimes's and
Victor Turner's focus on "performance," which ultimately amounts to
a notion of total involvement in ritual activity.[7] In ritual, according to this perspective, humans
engage the totality of hearts, minds, and bodies, setting them to
work creatively and dynamically to produce effects within the
social and mental worlds of the participants. Thus in zazen
(Sitting Zen), one does nothing but sit, generally in an approved
posture; one's mind and heart should be similarly focused on
nothing but sitting, not in the sense that one should think
continuously, "I'm sitting," but rather that one's mind should be
in a state parallel to the body's state, thinking nothing, resting,
yet remaining alert and awake, receptive to outside contact. In the
Catholic Eucharist (Mass), to take a quite different sort of
example, liturgical tradition emphasizes that the communicant
should be fully involved in the process, such that when the
miraculous transformation of the substance of wafer and wine
(Transubstantiation) occurs, and when in fact the communicant
receives these into the mouth, it is not only one's body that
receives the body and blood of Christ, but the totality of body,
mind, and soul. Thus this understanding of ritual emphasizes what
in RPG terms is called "immersion," a total involvement in the
activity. Failure on this score would be seen as ineffective
(zazen), impious (Eucharist), or shallow (RPG).

The Collaborative Storytelling model is less obviously
commensurate with a ritual model. Two directions, however, support
this formulation. First, there is Claude Lévi-Strauss's
structuralist interpretation of mythic and ritual thought as bricolage, and second, there is the movement largely
associated with Pierre Bourdieu, Sherry Ortner, and Catherine Bell
toward understanding ritual as "practice" (or "praxis" in the more
overtly Marxist formulations).[8]

Lévi-Strauss's idea, in simple terms, is that cultures think like oddly artistic hobbyists. [9] Imagine
you have a basement full of stuff from which to build whatever you
like. You have bits of old machines, things your neighbors threw
out, scraps of wood, and tail-ends of old projects, as well as the
taken-apart bits of all your old projects. Now you decide to build
something, and you have some ideas -- aesthetic and practical --
about how that should be done; you are very skilled and talented,
and can see possibilities in all sorts of things. But you do not
have a Home Depot available, or you consider it "cheating" to go
buy things. At any rate, you have to build the thing you're going
to build from what you already have in your basement.

A nice example is a Rube Goldberg cartoon, though those are
deliberately silly. You fly a kite, and the kite string pulls a
lever, and this pushes an old boot, and that turns on your iron,
and the iron burns some old pants, and smoke goes into a tree,
and.... A brilliant example is the recent Honda advertisement
called "the cog," which can readily be found on the
Internet.[10] The point is that one
constructs an elaborate machine out of bits and pieces already
owned.

Lévi-Strauss's point is that each object used contains its own
history; that is, the iron has already been used for
something and the bricoleur then gives it a new
use. The iron, to focus on the single example, is a local
source of heat; it can burn pants, or make a grilled-cheese
sandwich, and of course can press a shirt. But it cannot be a
refrigerator. And if, clever person that you are, you pull the
heating coil out of the iron for some project that requires a
heating coil, your iron now contains the history of its usage: it
is now a heating coil and a heavy weight.

Every sign in myth and ritual, says Lévi-Strauss, is like this iron, and every living mythic culture is like this
bricoleur. When faced with a (social) situation, an
intellectual problem of whatever kind, the bricoleur begins
by running through his memory (the basement) to see what he already
has that can be used to solve the problem. He then builds the
machine that solves the problem, in the process incorporating the
entire history of every object in question, and furthermore
altering (however slightly) each object so used; when he goes to
build something else, later on, the current project will be part of
the history of each object.

Technically speaking, every sign is thus constrained and
yet free. On the one hand, it is not constrained to the
degree of a percept, a particular contingent mental
encounter with an actual object; this percept is what is called a
"perception" in the formalist model to which Kim refers. A percept
is entirely constrained, because when a person looks at a given
object on two successive occasions, his or her mental equipment has
altered -- to use a cliché, one cannot enter the same river twice.
At the same time, a sign is not fully liberated, as is a
concept, an idea arising in reaction to a particular
person's connections to a percept: when I look at the lamp on the
table, I may think of my grandmother (who perhaps owned a similar
lamp), and thus "grandmother" is a legitimate conceptual link, but
no such connection may arise for you, and even if it did, it would
be a different grandmother. So a sign (Lévi-Strauss means
the Saussurean version of the sign) is both constrained (the iron
cannot be a refrigerator) and free (it can do a whole range of
things involving local intense heat). In Lévi-Strauss's linguistic
analogy, this iron is a sign in the same way as a word is: the word
"iron" can mean a range of things (the metal, the instrument) but
it cannot mean anything at all. Furthermore, this word only
acquires meaning by its relations to other words: if I say "iron,"
you do not know until I go on with "a pair of pants" what sort of
meaning I intend, even whether it is a verb or a noun.

The other approach I want to bring up, "practice" theory, arises
from a number of rather technical difficulties with structuralism,
and amounts to an attempt to understand manipulation of signs and
symbols in strategic yet controlled ways. With respect to ritual,
practice theory argues for a continuity among behaviors, as against
the disjuncture of ritual from other modes of action. The signs
used in ritual, that is, acquire meaning from their extra-ritual
contexts, and furthermore the special meanings accorded to them in
ritual carry over into other modes of life.

From a practice perspective, every ritual contains within itself
a number of structures, just as in structuralism; these structures
are in essence the Rube Goldberg machines constructed by the
bricoleur. As we know from Lévi-Strauss, the iron can be replaced by any other source of local heat, since its only function in the machine in question was to create smoke by burning a pair of pants. Thus the machine has a structure, requiring a number of elements, but the specifics of which objects or signs are used to
fill those element-slots are open. What interests practice theorists is strategic choice: how do people decide whether to use an iron or a space heater?

Broadly, the question in practice theory is how people choose,
from a limited range of culturally-available options, which
techniques to apply at a given moment. This depends on strategy: we
want to maximize rewards in a specific situation. But in order for
strategy to work, we have to play the game; that is, one cannot go
outside the structure of the system to manipulate signs as one
likes, because to do so annuls the power of the strategy in the
first place. Thus every strategic use of signs is at once a free,
liberated exercise of power by a situated person, and at the same
time a contribution to keeping the system stable and intact without
significant change. The possibility of real change is thus
undermined by the very strategies which seek to change the system,
because they depend for their efficacy upon the structures in
question.

If the dichotomy between virtual experience and collaborative
storytelling parallels that between performativity and what we
might call the practice of bricolage, as yet this parallel
serves no analytical or synthetic function; it is once more an
over-theorized and over-determined metaphor. In addition, it is as
yet under-explained, in that the theories may be formulated but
their application to the specific situation of RPG's is not yet
clear. In short, while we can see a parallel division within both
the two discourses and the two modes of behavior, this does not
answer the question: why are RPG's ritual?

Semiotic Modeling of Ritual and RPG

I have noted that Kim's use of the formalist
perception-discourse-conception model parallels the semiotic or
structural percept-sign-concept model. The difficulty with the
formalist model for this purpose, however, is that it is focused
primarily on an interpretive perspective, in which the
analyst stands in a perceptive relationship to a givendiscourse; like the circular model in hermeneutics,[11] the central issue is how an interpreter can make sense of a discourse already present, how we approach meaning through interpretation of texts and signs already distant from their producers (authors). Thus a central preoccupation of both formalist analysis and of hermeneutics has been the analysis of ways in which the reading situation is not conversational, in which reading a text is not having a conversation with the author. But in RPG's, the situation is normally conversational in an obvious sense, and thus this mode of analysis focuses on problems seemingly distant from those in RPG's.

The structural model of signification, from which the practice
theory also arose, is by contrast primarily concerned with the use
of signs by a current producer, a situation more obviously
commensurable with RPG play. The question, in short, is not how
players read a text produced for them by a game-master, but rather
how the whole group in combination produces signs and texts that
they themselves read. The structural model of signification fits
well here, as the primary issue is to understand ritual or mythic
activity as a mode of discourse production.

In ritual, participants manipulate a range of signs within a
constrained structure. That structure can change through such
manipulations, but only within narrow limits. Every Catholic
Eucharist differs significantly, in that the place, people, and
physical environment of the ritual vary, but this variation is
officially read by participants as within a fixed structure. The
post-Vatican II use of the vernacular in the Mass, for example, was
at once a major transformation of the structure of the ritual, and
at the same time theorized as not radically transformative: even in
the vernacular, according to the Vatican II council, the Eucharist
retains its sacramental efficacy. From a semiotic perspective, the
linguistic alteration represents a new negotiation of liturgical
language as a discrete sign, where Vatican II agreed that the
differences between Latin and the vernacular should not be
understood as an essential structure of the ritual, but rather a
relatively arbitrary sign amenable to conversion without
undermining ritual structure itself.

At this same level of semiotic manipulation, we can see in RPG
reconstruction and revision a parallel analytical discourse. Taking
to its extreme the Edwards et al. formulation that "system
matters,"[12] the claim is a clearly
structuralist one: transformation of system elements in RPG's
effects concomitant transformation of gameplay and orientation. For
example, a combat system dominated by so-called "realism", usually
meaning a high prioritization of real-world simulation in modes of
action and effects of violence, is not a discrete sign that may be
removed from a given game and replaced with an entirely stylized,
anti-"realist" combat system. Because such a system element is
structural, it links to all other parts of the total game
structure and its transformation thus strongly affects the whole.
Mike Holmes has made this point well, arguing that a "realist"
combat system colors the whole game, such that all activity occurs
with reference to such a preoccupation with violence;[13] as Kim puts it,

[E]ven if a gun is never fired during the
game session, the mechanics for that [weapon] may influence the
story -- because they shape how the player conceives of guns within
the fictional world. If the mechanics make all guns exceptionally
deadly, it increases the tension in a scene where a gun appears
even if the gun is never fired.

Thus the "system does matter" principle argues that system
elements are motivated signs, and thus contain structure; their
transformation affects the totality of the structure.

Between the Vatican II approach to language and the Forge
approach to system, however, we must recognize that the difference
is not absolute; furthermore, the distinction drawn is ideological,
not "factual." There can be no question, for example, that the use
of the vernacular in Catholic Mass has significantly changed the
ways in which Catholics experience the ritual; indeed, were this
not so, there would have been no reason to make the change in the
first place. Vatican II asserted a matter of aesthetic and
theological priority: however far-reaching the effects of this
transformation, they argued, the essential core of the ritual
(transubstantiation in a broad sense) would not be affected, and
whatever aesthetic loss of force might be entailed by the loss of
the affective qualities of Latin (as traditional, foreign, ancient,
powerful) would be more than made up for by gains in broader
spiritual involvement (through understanding the liturgy
intellectually, thus affectively through content rather than
through an aura of ritualism). Indeed, Martin Luther's move to the
vernacular was intended partly to combat the affective
dimension of Latin as itself powerful, arguing that this amounted
to a kind of fetishism or idolatry: the focus should be, he
thought, on the content of the words spoken, rather than on
their linguistic medium.

In Forge RPG theory, conversely, there is an implicit
distinction between system elements and other elements. It
is certainly plausible that the radical transformation of the
combat system of Dungeons and Dragons from the AD&D
system to the recent d20 system considerably changes all elements
of gameplay, even those not overtly connected with combat; to
replace the combat system with a more freeform model akin to The
Pool would presumably effect further changes. But first of all,
it seems clear that transforming other elements of the game
(setting, background, character generation) would also entail
drastic concomitant changes in gameplay; for example, d20 games not
based on Dungeons and Dragons genre and story conventions
exist in considerable numbers, and certainly do not play exactly
the same way as does Dungeons and Dragons. In short, it is
unclear how one is to classify elements into arbitrary and
motivated, into those which can be shifted without large-scale
structural effects and those which cannot.[14]

More interestingly, RPG theorists (taken in the broadest sense)
generally make a series of divisions among elements in their games,
and implicitly argue for relative arbitrariness. That is, the
notion that a "combat system" is in any sense a discrete element, a
discrete structure, should not be accepted uncritically. If the
Forge "system matters" principle argues that even apparently
discrete structures like this are motivated and not arbitrary, we
must recognize that this presumes a tendency to see such systems as
arbitrary, that they are apparently discrete. By emphasizing
that "system" is motivated and structural, the Forge theorists
further suggest a prioritization of elements, where motivation is
taken as superior to arbitrariness, so that theoretical analysis
and synthesis should focus on structure rather than sign. To put
this differently, it is implicit that RPG's consist of a vast group
of interrelated elements, falling into a natural hierarchical
order; those nearest the trunk of the tree, as it were, are
relatively motivated and theoretically important, while those
nearest the branch-tips are more arbitrary and of lesser
theoretical weight.

At the same time, few would argue that the arbitrary,
non-structural signs are trivial or unimportant. Such arbitrary
elements as Color (essentially affective set-dressing in imagined
space) or snack choices by players are not irrelevant, and may in
particular instances be elevated to structural elements: the
game-concept Long Pig The Role-Playing Game made snack
choice and usage into a system element, while Ars Magica
troupes interested in medieval history may make set-dressing a
primary focus for play.[15] But the claim is
that it is by shifting such elements from arbitrary to
motivated, from incidental to system, that they become
analytically important; in general, the analyst does not focus
classification on such elements, but rather begins with system.

The important point here is that whether the issue is the
relative weight of meaningful dimensions of liturgical language or
the classification of structural elements in RPG's, the
understanding is in both cases ideological, intended not
only to classify and analyze the ritual in question but also to
emphasize and push for improvement in the activity, thus making
normative claims about what the ritual should be about.
Precisely at this point, predictably, the ideological weapon of
"practicality" often comes into play in RPG discourse: because a
more purely analytic classificatory model (e.g. the polythetic
comparative model proposed for the humanities by Jonathan Z.
Smith[16]) eschews normative claims in the
form of practical suggestions for game design or ritual construction, the RPG theorist codes such classification as impractical, thus valueless. This is equivalent to a Catholic liturgist saying of an academic theorist's analysis that it is irrelevant because it does not help formulate new dimensions in Mass. For the academic, however, this is precisely the point: she may be interested to see the results of her analyses serving a constructive use to the liturgist, she does not wish to impose her perspective upon those she studies. Ronald Grimes, for example, believes deeply that ritual theory can be of constructive value for people seeking to formulate or reformulate their rituals, but as a rule he does not tell them how to go about it.[17] A ritualist who denounces Grimes for not proposing a "how-to" makes an entirely ideological -- and ultimately incoherent -- claim: if Grimes does not propose a "how-to," his work is useless; if on the other hand he does tell ritualists how to "fix" their rituals, he will (and should!) be denounced for telling others what they ought to believe.

I have come a long way around, but the notion of RPG's as ritual
can now be asserted directly. Between RPG theory and RPG practice
there exists a dynamic relationship structurally identical to that
between the theory and practice of ritual within lived ritual
communities. RPG theory, by this logic, is only commensurable to
academic theory and analytical method through a deeper and more
complex formulation; a relatively direct correlation links RPG's to
rituals in their actuality.[18] In order
to recognize this link, we must accept the duality of theory and
practice as integral to ritual performance itself; in other words,
rituals are not actions or activities performed in isolation from
their cultural worlds, but rather performances related to
theoretical concerns in the same way as game-play relates to the
theory and system-construction that surrounds it.

To put this differently, and more specifically, RPG play enacts
theory, in the sense that standing behind and prior to play is a
series of theoretical constructs: system design, GM notes, pre-play
agreements and social contract, genre expectations, and other
theoretical tools. From this perspective, RPG play acts out this
prior structure; this is equivalent to the old reading of ritual as
acting out a liturgical text. At the same time, the prior structure
is to a degree open to challenge within game play, and furthermore
does not fully constrain particular game actions, determining a
range and a set of priorities rather than laying out a script. As
has been recognized for some decades now, the same can be said of
the most formal ritual: within apparent constraint there is scope
for contestation, not only of the various issues and questions
related to a particular ritual's situation within the social
context, but also of the ritual itself with all its symbols.

Nevertheless, these two views are always in dynamic, creative
tension: the available range of manipulations of ritual signs
stands within a structural context only slightly accessible to
interior challenge. For example, radical transformation of Catholic
liturgy cannot proceed from within ritual performance
itself, while small-scale local transformation and contestation are
fully expected. Radical transformation of liturgy, as we have seen
with Vatican II, must come from a theoretical discourse exterior
to performance. Conversely, such discourse acquires its ability
to challenge ritual structurally by sacrificing its analytical and
normative force at the local level; that is, while Vatican II could
change liturgical language, a structural change not available to a
given congregation at the moment of performance, the congregation
can manipulate particular performances to effect social meanings
inaccessible to the Vatican. For example, a particular wedding
ritual may be used, at a given moment and in a particular
contingent historical situation, to enable deep consideration
within the congregation about the traditions of marriage, divorce,
and childbirth; these same issues can be discussed by the College
of Cardinals, as indeed they are, but not at the level of
particular people in particular time, since they can only formulate
principles and cannot apply them individually.

Precisely the same dynamic obtains in RPG discourse. While a
given structural situation of notes, game system, theoretical
models, and so forth formulates a contextual model within which
play occurs, such structures do not extend to the level of
individual particularity that is central to play experience; that
is, no game structure can be so logically intensive as to dictate
every action and speech by every participant at all times, because
to do so (even were it possible) would annul the entire nature of
the game as game. In fact, this limitation of theoretical
efficacy is granted the status of a virtue in Forge theory, through
the double formulation of "practicality" as a rational anchor and
the hierarchization of the relative motivation of system structures
as relative theoretical importance. Not surprisingly, we find that
the usual model of RPG discourse has it that performance (play) is
the "real" anchor of RPG's, and that theory is understood by its
proponents as a potentially liberating source of creativity and
energy for "real" play.

Liminality in Ritual and RPG: Preliminary Classification

If we recognize in RPG's a dynamic interaction of theoretical
and practical reason, between structure and event, it is not clear
how within the practical sphere the active, strategic manipulation
of signs actually works. That is, we have seen that in religious
ritual, situated people deploy signs and structures within the
context of larger, only partly flexible structures, and that RPG
play stands within a similar context; we need now to understand how
RPG players manipulate signs and structures for strategic reasons,
and how such strategies are both free and subject to
constraint.

For this purpose, I would like to propose a specific analogy,
that of RPG play to a particular mode of ritual behavior. At the
outset, however, I should note that this is analogy and not
identity; that is, while RPG is (and is not merely like)
ritual, it is nevertheless a distinct and specific kind of
ritual, one with no exact equivalent in other ritual spheres. Thus
this analysis must be effected within a deliberately constrained
comparative model, in order to evade the methodological problems
attendant upon the loose metaphoricities described in the
introduction.

Every modern scholar of ritual is familiar with the liminal
model of rites de passage (passage-rites), originally
proposed by Arnold van Gennep in the eponymous book, and elevated
to a critical analytical model in especially the earlier work of
Victor Turner.[19] In its classic
formulation by van Gennep, such passage-rites as initiations
consist of three stages. First, the neophyte is separated from the symbolic and social structures which normally surround him; second, the neophyte passes through a liminal phase, in which a series of new and powerful symbols known as sacra are presented to the neophyte for consideration and reflection; and finally, the neophyte is aggregated back into the social structure, now in a new status.

For example, in boys' puberty initiations, the boy is removed
from boyhood and society in general, perhaps secluded in a special
initiation hut or otherwise physically removed; in addition, he is
visibly marked as unclassified, e.g. having his head shaved, being
painted black or white, stripped of clothing, and so forth. Once
separation from boyhood has been effected, the neophyte is in a
condition of liminality, "betwixt and between," neither this nor
that; neither boy nor man, he is unclassifiable, a condition
generally expressed through symbols marking status as not participating in even a larger range of classes: he may be dressed
as an androgyne, marking him as neither male nor female (and both);
he may be forced to lie on the ground in a posture normal for
corpses, marking him as neither dead nor alive (and both); and so
forth.

In this liminal phase, various sacred symbols (sacra) are
presented to the boy and his co-initiates (such initiations usually
involve several boys at once), in the form of monstrous and bizarre
masks, objects, or behaviors, presented to the neophytes by
already-initiated men. All these signs serve as objects of thought,
and are commonly distorted to emphasize reflection on particular
issues; for example, a figurine or dancing costume might be
shrunken and blurred in all its parts, but bear a wildly
exaggerated phallus, encouraging reflection on sexuality and male
sexual identity.

In an example discussed by Turner,[20]
Bemba girls are presented with an earthenware figurine of an
exaggeratedly pregnant woman who carries four infants, two at her
equally exaggerated breasts and two on her back; other features of
this figure (arms and legs, for example) are shrunken to stubs. The
figurine in this case is accompanied by a riddling song about a
mythical midwife, and initiated women say the riddle's point is
straightforward: Bemba tradition demands that after giving birth
women abstain from sexual intercourse for a year. But a woman's
husband may object to this, and one's mother or mother-in-law may
also demand that the young woman get pregnant again, as the older
woman wants grandchildren and the husband wants sexual satisfaction. The point of the sacrum, then, is that a wife who does not respect the tradition of abstention will become like the figurine, dominated to destruction by babies and their care. However much a woman may wish to give in to her husband or mother -- or her own desires -- she must abstain. Thus the use of exaggerated symbols in the liminal phase focuses attention on traditional culture, its reasons and purposes, and ultimately promotes conformity.

Once this instructional phase has concluded, aggregation usually
begins with more or less permanent markers of the new status,
followed by social presentation of the neophyte to the relevant
communities (initiates, then society at large). For example, a boy
may be circumcised, marking him permanently as an initiate (thus
fully male), then dressed in men's clothing (not unlike the old
British practice of a boy's changing permanently from short to long
pants); the initiates are then presented to the men, who welcome
them into the men's longhouse or equivalent male structure from
which they were previously forbidden, and they depart this house to
be greeted by the women of the community as men rather than
boys.

The emphasis in the current analysis is, as for Turner, the
liminal. There is no difficulty spotting separation and aggregation
in RPG's. Depending on a particular group's habitual practices and
preferences, separation may begin at the front door of the host's
house or apartment; this is particularly apparent in more
LARP-oriented play, where entry into the broadly-defined play space
is marked by a transformation of manner and affect, even of
clothing. But the most limited table-top play generally marks a
separation between game-play and out-of-game behavior. This is
perhaps most obvious negatively, in objections to players who do
not focus on the game and continually introduce "irrelevant" topics
(television shows, video games, current events, etc.) into
play.

I have marked the term "irrelevant" with quotes for a reason:
these topics are only irrelevant if and to the degree that a given
group marks them so, a point generally negotiated through piecemeal
social contract means. The LARP example, as an extreme of the
Virtual Experience model, may tend to object to any introduction of
topics or behaviors not previously formulated as "in-game." A
smaller-scale variant of this general dynamic is the issue of
"in-character" as distinct from "out-of-character": in some groups,
speech should be performed in-character, in that anything said by a
given player should be taken as the speech of that player's current
character; sometimes this takes the form of linguistic constraint,
notably the demand that players speak of their characters in the
first person rather than the third.

At a more strategic level, groups may make a sharp distinction
between in-character and out-of-character knowledge, raising as a
problem whether a player may act in-character upon knowledge
presumably not available to his character. That is, if Alan
(playing Thror the Barbarian) knows that Marler the Wizard (played
by Barbara) has been captured by an evil sorcerer and is held in a
deep dungeon below the castle in which Thror now stands, and Alan
knows this because as a player he was present when Marler/Barbara
was captured, but Thror was not on the scene and thus has no
particular way to know what has occurred, a group must consider
whether Alan may have Thror head for the deep dungeon to rescue
Marler.

The question is complex, and may be handled strategically at any
number of levels. For example, some groups feel that, so long as
Thror's rescue of Marler would make an exciting story, the fact
that Thror "knows" nothing about the capture is irrelevant. Even
within this perspective, however, we might note a distinction
between Alan having Thror "happen accidentally" to head downwards,
postulating an in-game coincidence to cover the out-of-game
implausibility, as against Alan having Thror declaim in ringing
tones that somehow he knows what has occurred, postulating a
backwards revision of plot and thus annulling disjuncture. Another
strategic choice, of course, would have Alan simply ignore what has
happened to Marler, since Thror is "actually" ignorant of it; Alan
and Barbara may hope that events will transpire such that Thror can
rescue Marler, but the interior logic of the game-world in this
case does not permit Alan's use of out-of-character knowledge to
alter events in this fashion.

At a theoretical level, the same issues obtain, particularly in
the aesthetics of game design. Some groups prefer to keep rules and
systems as far in the background as possible, because they see such
structures as irrelevant to the game-world; that is, since Thror
himself cannot be imagined thinking that he has a +7 to hit but a
-2 to damage if he swings his fist, while he has a +3 to hit and a
+6 to damage if he swings his sword, the strategic choices made by
Alan in selecting the appropriate attack for the situation can be
read as interfering with the interior game-logic. Other groups see
such activity on Alan's part as an essential aspect of gaming as an
activity. For example, one can treat a Dungeons and Dragons
"dungeon-crawl" as a competition by the players, as strategic
manipulators of an intricate mechanical system, against the Dungeon
Master who has similarly manipulated the system to construct a
difficult challenge; in this case, Barbara's choice to cast Magic
Missile rather than Fireball because she makes a trade-off between
damage inflicted upon a chosen target and the collateral damage
which comes from the fireball spell, not to mention the specifics
of range, casting-time, and material components, is anything but
irrelevant: indeed, at one extreme, this may constitute much of the
fun of play.

In any event, the problem of negotiating the bridge between
in-character and out-of-character is founded upon the structural
separation effected at the outset of ritual. The social aggregation
at the close of play thus amounts to an undoing of this separation:
players step back from the in-character world (to whatever extent
they postulated themselves as in it) in order to receive rewards or
accolades, rehash enjoyable events, and generally begin shifting
from a relatively discontinuous and separated game-time to an
ordinary social event, itself marked eventually by the dispersal of
the participants to their everyday lives.

We have already seen that within the liminal phase, the "game
itself," classification, and identity are sites of considerable
contestation and difficulty. But it is when we take into account
the question of sacra and response that the parallel to
initiation becomes particularly valuable. In particular, when we
consider the interrelation of freedom and conformity, i.e. the
political nature of liminality, we can begin to dig under
the surface of gaming to discern the social relations and contracts
which make play possible.

Liminality in RPG's: The Social Rituals of Play

One of Turner's great achievements in the study of ritual was
his explication of the socio-political implications of ritual
activity; while he was hardly alone in formulating this general
perspective, Turner has the advantage for present purposes of
having a relatively clear model that does not depend on extensive
prior reading in the literature of anthropology or sociology.

As liminality theory shaded into the origins of "practice"
theory, it gave rise to a stock type of analysis. The symbols of a
given ritual, particularly its liminal phase, would be explicated
for purposes of situation, giving sufficient data for the reader to
make sense of the further argument. The analyst would then attempt
to demonstrate the following dynamic at work: within the liminal
phase, neophytes -- and by extension, the society as a whole --
employ symbols and structures to challenge, test, and even
undermine the structures and norms of authority; through the ritual
process, however, particularly as the liminal phase moves towards
conclusion in aggregation, all this "testing" ends up serving the
purposes of established authority. Thus the ritual gives the
illusion of freedom and choice, but actually enforces
conformity; ritual is thus read as a technique of mystification by
which cultural authority can be produced and reproduced by
deceiving participants in all walks of society into accepting these
authority structures as natural, given, and ideal.

There is certainly truth in this reading. For example, numerous
carnivalesque rituals (Mardi Gras in New Orleans, Carnàval,
Saturnalia, etc.) do indeed construct a special space and time in
which to express discontent, disorder, radicalism, and challenge,
all of which is then often deployed in a larger cultural context to
emphasize the "rightness" of hegemonic discourses of authority. But
more recently scholars have begun to grant that this reading is
simplistic: Mardi Gras has on numerous occasions been used
precisely to foment revolt, for example. Thus recent practice
theory, when it has focused on ritual and liminality, has tended to
admit that ritual does produce conformity through the illusion of
free choice, but at the same time to grant that particular agents
in particular historical situations have the ability to manipulate
symbols to their own advantage, despite the apparent constraints
(and apparent freedoms) of ritual structures.

At present, I will not push the socio-political reading of RPG's
beyond the narrow, local community. It would be interesting to
consider how RPG's as ritual necessarily participate in and
reconstitute the structures of society at large, but the data-set
required to do such analysis meaningfully is prohibitively large.
In addition, ethnography of game-sessions has barely begun, if
indeed it can be said to have begun at all, and thus we have only
the most dubious sort of anecdotal data. My concern, then, is with
the socio-political workings within a gaming group, which
amounts to an analytic perspective on the social contract of such a
group as it intersects with other structures of gaming.

It is worth noting here that the dominant Forge theory generally
takes social contract to be a maximally distanced structure,
standing at the upper extreme of the hierarchy of RPG structure.
While there has been discussion of social contract and means by
which it can be negotiated in order to avoid paradigmatic or
personal conflict, the emphasis fits squarely within Edwards's
overall approach. That is, because social contract is seen as at a
considerable remove from in-game play issues, the most efficient
way to deal with contractual problems is to discuss them outside of
play, e.g. by confronting a problem player outside of game time, by
formulating explicit social expectations before play, and so forth.
But the fact remains that these problems generally arise
within game play, and prior constraint cannot fully predict
or forestall such difficulties. I suggest, in fact, that precisely
because RPG's are ritual behaviors, social conflict is inherent in the form. At the same time, from a practical perspective, it is worth recognizing that because structural and sign-manipulation achieve their maximal expressions within liminality, with extra-ritual commentary discourse primarily functioning to protect ritual tradition against challenge, acting disjunctively to separate possible challenges from the fragile yet powerful matrix of ritual performance, play itself will necessary be the central locus of social contestation, and importantly it is only within its structures that conjunctive solutions are possible. In other words, while extra-gameplay discourse may try to protect a game against social contract problems arising within gameplay, such strategies cannot of themselves achieve consensus; the means by which a group can resolve such questions must be sought within play.

Extending from this point, we may note a common tensive
relationship between extra-ritual assertions of hegemony over
performance on the one hand, and on the other a concomitant
counter-balancing of the manipulation of ritual as a site for
resistance. Simply put, it is often the case that as authoritative
discourse tries to increase control over what happens within ritual
performance externally, resistant elements become increasing
empowered within performance and have greater efficacy without. In
an RPG context specifically, it seems not unlikely that
increasingly emphatic assertions of hegemonic control of
appropriate play and in-game discourse will tend to evoke
increasing resistance within play, which is to say that players
within the game will tend to challenge strong norms asserted by the
game-master (or the game text, the received tradition of
appropriate play, etc.) the more forcefully they are expressed. One
classic example returns us to Advanced Dungeons and Dragons:
the more Gary Gygax asserted his authority and authenticity in
laying down constraints about "the right way to play," the more
particular groups and players were drawn either to revise the game,
to play other games, or to challenge Gygax's principles from within
play. With respect to more ordinary assertions of authority, e.g.
"railroading,"[21] the more overt the
railroading the greater the tendency to resist; that is, if GM
railroading involves providing genuine incentives to follow the
predetermined plot structure, resistance may be minimal, while if a
GM simply blocks all choices but the "correct" one through ad
hoc and increasingly ridiculous means (deus ex machina maneuvers, etc.), players may find themselves led to beat their heads against the imposed limitations rather than find creative and enjoyable means by which to "play along."[22]

My point is not simply that strong formulations of norms in play
style and social interaction may produce the reverse of the desired
effect, though this is worth consideration. Rather, I wish to
emphasize that semiotic manipulation within play reacts to
functions in the given structural context, such that assertions of
social or technical norms naturally constitute important objects of
gameplay contestation. As in initiation ritual, the imposition of
social structures through such means as sacra or rules
systems demands challenge and consideration within ritual;
attempts to eliminate such semiotic manipulation within ritual
liminality, including gameplay, can only provoke two kinds of
response: resistance to the norms or elimination of ritual
effectiveness. Thus the nature of gameplay as ritual activity
necessarily determines its focus on manipulation and challenge of
given structures.

If RPG play can be read as reactive, it is neither mechanical
nor passive, and a great strength of both structural and practice
theories is the emphasis on dynamism in the relationship. If on the
one hand ritual imposes upon its participants a series of
interlinked structures and motivated signs, to which participants
are then forced to react by the normative view of ritual activity
and thought, at the same time those participants actually have
considerable flexibility in doing so. This is where some of the
earlier Marxist approaches overestimated the hegemony of
authority-structures: they assumed that the imposition not only of
signs but of structures through which to think them fully
constrained initiates (for example) to conform to a rigid status
quo; ritual could thus be read as a means of combating in advance
nonconformity, resistance, and the potential for revolution,
because it mystified the arbitrary, cultural nature of authority
structures by transposing them into tradition, and then
constructing a notion of tradition as natural and "given" in nature
or meta-nature (the gods, the spirits, etc.). But as numerous
critics of such ritual theories noted, this implies a special
division in society: there are those who create
authority-structures, who to some degree know that these structures
are merely inventions, and then there are those who are simply
slates inscribed upon by such authority structures through ritual;
the only flexible part of this formulation would be the first part,
in that it is possible that authorities too are entirely subject to
what they take to be given structures and traditions, such that
everyone is enslaved by ignorance of the functions and methods of
their own society. Good Marxism this may be, but it does presume
that people are entirely controlled and dominated by what they are
told, and never think flexibly.[23] In fact,
the approach deconstructs itself: if this is all true, how can the
academic analyst spot the problem at all? Presumably, academia
would constitute a constrained discourse that recognizes itself as
an object of critical analysis, in which case how did it become so?
The logical conclusion essentially would assert that the members of
critical academic discursive circles are a different sort of people
than those constrained by discourse, such that radical elitism
becomes a naturalized and normative structure -- precisely that
which the analysis desired to challenge in the first place.

In RPG's, flexibility is relatively obvious: few if any players
or observers would assert that gameplay is so constrained as to
prevent flexibility in semiotic manipulation of any kind. At the
same time, this creativity is still generally taken as a marker of
the distinctive or even unique character of RPG's. Quite apart from
the fact that this entails RPG theorists' participation in the
reproduction of authoritarian notions of ritual behavior, a complex
logical circle inserts itself in this understanding, common it
seems from the inception of RPG's as a discrete ritual form. With
the explication of this circularity, it will become clear why I
emphasize an analogical parallel to liminality in religious
ritual.

Creativity as Circularity

Overt acceptance of creativity and flexibility within RPG play
is indeed unusual in ritual. Importantly, however, it is not the
existence of such dynamism that marks a distinctive ritual
mode, but the fact that participants of all levels recognize and
accept this. By contrast, the modern Catholic Eucharist permits
considerable scope for flexibility and creativity in each and every
performance, by every participant at every level, but this is not
commonly accepted as either present or desirable; we might note
that the common disdain for Neopagan ritual invention among
relatively knowledgeable mainstream religious Americans includes
(but is not limited to) a distinction between "real" or
"traditional" ritual as opposed to those which Neopagans "make
up."[24] In this context, we can read the
ideological split as a claim against creativity within the special
context of ritual, importantly different from how RPG discourse
consciously constructs itself as creative and dynamic.[25]

To put this in terms of initiation, we find that the liminal
phase involves flexibility and invention on the parts of not only
the neophytes but also the entire society; at the same time, such
flexibility is commonly denied by the hegemonic discourse, as
already indicated by the tendency to conceive of neophyte
interaction with sacra as "instruction" rather than creative
engagement. Similarly, we find numerous discourses about
carnivalesque ritual formulated in terms of what has been called a
"hydraulic" theory: carnivals act as valves, allowing participants
to "blow off steam" rather than harness it to antisocial ends. By
permitting marginal elements of society to "act out" their
frustrations, authorities retain control of real power and maintain
the stability of those they dominate. Real challenge or engagement
with social rules is annulled, because it "doesn't count" in ritual
space.

Thus the demarcation of ritual space and time -- that formal
construction of division between ritual and everything else central
to what Catherine Bell calls "ritualization" -- lends itself to
protection of social norms. In RPG's, with their discourse of
invention and creativity, such protection seems non-present or at
least marginal. But this accords with expectations: by asserting
that RPG gameplay constitutes a protected space in which to deal
with the limited range of issues at stake in a given game, RPG's
naturally tend to assert not only that gameplay permits flexible
engagement with social norms but also that the effects of exterior
norms on players do not play a significant role in the game. For
example, the protection of RPG's allows a male player to play a
female character, a heterosexual player to play a homosexual
character, without its being read as relevant to the player's
out-of-game identity; we do not, that is, assume that a male player
who chooses a female character is actually conflicted about his
sexual identity. At the same time, this entails that the female
character in question, if she appears as a chauvinist stereotype,
cannot "officially" be read to imply chauvinism on the part of the
player.

While for majority players -- white, male, middle-class -- this
freedom may not appear problematic, it entails real difficulties
when (especially) female players enter the game situation, most
especially if such players have a romantic and/or sexual
affiliation with another player. Indeed, female players often find
themselves read as "not serious," "just the GM's girlfriend," and
so forth. When such players experience events in game-time, whether
plot events effected by other players or overtly structural
elements constructed within the game rules, their responses may be
read as problematic for in-game discourse. To take an extreme
example, if a female player reacts (in-character or out, in-game or
out) negatively to a rape scene perpetrated upon her (or any)
character, some groups will interpret this as a failure by the
player to recognize the lines separating gameplay from ordinary
discourse; more insidiously, perhaps, the player may feel that she
should not overtly respond negatively, precisely because she
accepts that other players grant this absolute division of
discursive spaces, de-legitimizing her own emotional response as
confirmation that she is not a "serious" player.

The common RPG theoretical response to such a situation, at
least in recent times, is to grant the legitimacy of the player's
response. But this is formulated as a special case: certain types
of in-game discourse "cross the lines" or "go overboard." By
implication, normative in-game activity does not require
such responses, and thus this theoretically symptomatic treatment
of the situation continues to emphasize that gameplay constitutes a
protected space by constructing new social-contract rules to
prevent specific problems. That is, theoretical criticism of the
rape situation proposed above amounts to this: RPG groups and games
ought to have rules that say that players' characters cannot be
raped. But this misses the point. On the one hand, it constrains
RPG discourse to a limited range of social issues, making
commentary and criticism of rape (for example) simply a prohibited
discourse, undermining the very dynamic freedom which is supposed
to permit a player to deal with situations that he or she would or
could not encounter in real life; on the other, it retains and
protects the hegemony of RPG discourse as something within which
players may not respond personally or emotionally by making those
situations in which such responses are legitimate into abnormal
cases.

Continuing the comparison to initiatory ritual in particular, we
have here an extra-ritual response to contingent historical
circumstance through limitation. In the case of the Bemba girls'
initiation mentioned above, let us suppose that a girl responds to
the figurine by saying, "If I become like the figurine, the white
organizations that provide support and health services will give
extra assistance even outside of infant care; therefore for my
family in the current situation the appropriate answer to the
riddle is that I should throw over tradition and use pregnancy to
create a cargo-cult reciprocity with whites."[26] Here we see a creative, dynamic response to the symbolic structures proposed, but with an ultimate response at odds with the hegemonic intent. An obvious counter-response would add additional symbols and instructions to prevent this response by future neophytes, and perhaps provide extra-ritual instruction of this particular neophyte so as to annul the validity of her solution.

In RPG ritual discourse, the same structure of constraint
through piecemeal placation consistently obtains. To the extent
that RPG players understand themselves as creative and dynamic, not
controlled by encultured norms, they are enabled to reproduce
challenged norms within gameplay as protected space. That is, the
liberation and protection afforded players with respect to uneasy
social issues tends only to enable players who (often
unconsciously) represent majority discourses to reenact the
violence of those social categories in a hegemonically protected
fashion, defended by the structure of the RPG as separated and
distinct. If the white, male player's black, female character
enacts stereotypes, the notional freedom explored merely reproduces
dubious social norms, an effect seen overtly in fantasy and science
fiction book cover images (e.g. the work of Boris Vallejo), with
their manly men with weapons and voluptuous women in revealing
clothing.

To shift the modalities of play from reproductive to
transformational may be desirable, but it is unclear how this might
be effected. While RPG ritual liminality permits exploration, its
structured and constrained nature acts to defend stereotype
reproduction as "freedom" while blocking challenges thereto as
failures of player technique or understanding. Logically, practical
game-construction cannot merely strive to forestall deployment of
stereotypes, but must work actively to undermine their function
within gameplay; it is here that critical formation of
counter-hegemonic moves (e.g. feminist game design) must focus
effort, at the same time recognizing that simply formulating a game
that pre-determines the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate
structure challenges cannot achieve anything.

Disjuncture and Continuity

As we have seen, the liminal phase of passage ritual, or more
broadly the "sacred space" effected by social disjunctures
outlining any ritual practice, affords a privileged site for
examination and contestation of extra-ritual concerns; this sacred
space in RPG's is found in gameplay, often understood as a "safe"
place for exploration, and distinguished from other active spaces
by a number of explicit and more subtle formations. So far, I have
focused on how such privilege and safety becomes a double-edged
sword, permitting some forms of experimentation while denying
others legitimacy, and also undercutting the radicalism of
experiment to render it harmless. But as with any ritual, the
protective structures that reproduce hegemonic discourse formations
are themselves genuinely threatened by in-ritual challenges. It is
worth considering how such challenge may be formulated through
semiotic manipulation in gameplay.

In The Savage Mind, Claude Lévi-Strauss suggested that ritual tends to be conjunctive, as opposed to the disjunctive,
classifying emphasis of myth. His meaning is best expressed,
perhaps, in a discussion of the difference between game and
rite:

All games are defined by a set of rules
which in practice allow the playing of any number of matches.
Ritual, which is also 'played', is on the other hand, like a
favoured instance of a game, remembered from among the possible
ones because it is the only one which results in a particular type
of equilibrium between the two sides. The transposition is readily
seen in the case of the Gahuku-Gama of New Guinea who have learnt
football but who will play, several days running, as many matches
as are necessary for both sides to reach the same score. This is
treating a game as a ritual.... Games thus appear to have a
disjunctive effect: they end in the establishment of a
difference between individual players or teams where originally
there was no indication of inequality. And at the end of the game
they are distinguished into winners and losers. Ritual, on the
other hand, is the exact inverse: it conjoins, for it brings
about a union ... or in any case an organic relation between two
initially separate groups....[27]

The point is that a game like soccer or Monopoly takes a group
of people not initially distinct in game terms and divides them
into at least two classes (winners and losers). By contrast, the
ritual performance of soccer described here does not conclude until
all players have been made equivalent; latent in Lévi-Strauss's formulation is that the natives project their preexisting social divisions upon the game by picking teams upon non-arbitrary given grounds. For example, they might decide that each team will be made up exclusively of initiated men of a given moiety, so that the teams represent moieties; through the ritual process, they then construct a situation in which this difference is asserted as non-absolute. This is arguably the point of the modern Olympic
Games: national participation through representative athletes is
supposed to assert that all men are brothers, that superiority is
individual and not national, and so forth.

Setting aside the numerous quite serious problems with L
vi-Strauss's theory with respect to ritual as a broad range of
behaviors -- indeed, I doubt he intended that it be taken as a
general principle in the first place -- we can see this dynamic at
work in a major RPG discourse, particularly that which emphasizes
the collaborative nature of play. As we have already seen, in Kim's
Collaborative Storytelling model "play is understood as multiple
authors producing a single discourse and a single story." The same
model discourages secrets among participants, and judges success
partly by whether "all of the participants significantly
contributed to that discourse." Following up Lévi-Strauss's notion, we can see here a striving toward conjunction and unity, as against disjuncture in the form of "winning" or limited player dominance of the discourse. In other words, one of the distinctive
characteristics of RPG's as opposed to more traditional games is
precisely that they fit a ritual rather than a game model.

At the same time, a more serious deployment of structural and
practice perspectives on the semiotic elements of both religious
and RPG ritual must recognize the oversimplification inherent in
this conjunction/division split. First, that there are no winners
or losers cannot be accepted uncritically. Precisely because a
dominant RPG discourse denies such divisions, we must consider the
possibility that play imposes upon players a notional unity
by denying the option to seek or even accept division. After all,
if we extend this rhetoric of unity, it can be taken as a claim
that in-game, all players are equal and in fact equivalent, which
may be deployed strategically by situationally- or
socially-dominant players to assert that complaints are anti-group
and thus mark bad players. In this context, the discourse of
collaboration and unity can support the problematic use of
hegemonic authoritarian or oppressive discourse, as discussed
previously in the context of chauvinism.

But not all such challenge necessarily supports authority or
serves as an instrument of oppression. To take a simple example,
the rhetoric of unity and conjunction may be deployed to block
favoritism or to identify problem players as those who either try
to dominate play or refuse to participate at all. Especially in the
latter case, the unifying effect of ritual process may enable a
group to draw out a timid player, emphasizing further the liminal
"safety" of game space.

More interestingly, however, the conjunctive nature of ritual
process may act together with the aggregation of ritual closure to
effect genuine social alteration. A play group is often formed on
an ad hoc basis, where some players do not know each other
well outside of the game context, and indeed may not have met.
Through successful ritual collaboration in a shared space
understood as distinct from other social spaces, a new social group
forms, enabling friendship and other forms of collaboration that
refer to the constructed game-space rather than to other social
structures. That is, precisely because gameplay is at once divided
from other social spaces and nominally focused upon a limited set
of predetermined issues, and because such rituals do act
conjunctively by taking given divisions and annulling "winner and
loser" categorizations, gameplay tends naturally to formulate an
alternative social framework. Particularly for those who find
mainstream, dominant social frameworks problematic or dangerous,
gameplay can constitute a controlled social space in which to
succeed and seek liberation.

However psychologically supportive and validating such an
alternative framework may be -- and it is worth noting that some
psychologists have pointed to RPG's as valuable for
self-exploration and validation among (especially) teenagers --
from a broader social perspective we should recognize that this
essentially entails a continuation of the initiation discourse.
Turner notes that it is common that the neophytes, whatever their
extra-ritual socio-economic status, are as part of the liminal
leveling considered equivalent. While friendships among those
simultaneously initiated often extend beyond the ritual situation,
social status, factored out within liminality, is not particularly
affected by such friendships. That is, it could be argued that the
shared space of ritual, although it permits and even demands
reflection upon social inequalities, ultimately acts not only to
affirm these inequalities as natural and given, but also deludes
those in inferior positions into thinking that they achieve a
measure of equality that is in fact nonexistent. From this
perspective, we can see that RPG's may act simultaneously to affirm
and assist players psychologically, and at the same time discourage
them from acting upon or challenging the inequities of modern
social dynamics. Anecdotally, at least, we seem to see this in
stereotypes of RPG players as "geeks" or "nerds" who, by
participating in gaming, in conventions, and generally in a
subculture, are thereby diverted or distracted from real social
action or mobilization. To formulate a rather overstated Marxist
reading, the recognition of RPG's as ritual is confirmed by its
ability to serve as an opiate for the oppressed.

Conclusions: Toward an RPG of Practical Reason

At present, RPG theory primarily acts as an exterior, supporting
discourse referred toward the "real thing" -- gameplay. Ironically,
criticism of some RPG theory as irrelevant or trivial, on the
ground that it is not practical for play goals, actually serves to
grant power and hegemony to theoretical discourse: the very fact
that gameplay so strongly formulates the barriers between in-game
and out-of-game, play and system, in-character and
out-of-character, reproduces the mystification of theory's active
role in discourse construction. As a way of concluding this
somewhat dispersed series of analyses, then, I should like to
propose some new directions in theory, directions which I think
contain the possibility for real practical change.

First, theory must recognize a distinction between analysis and
synthesis. While it is important that such a distinction not become
the object of fetishism, as it in a sense already has, the
mystification of the aspect of RPG's traditionally associated with
hierarchy and power can only lead to abuse on the one hand,
analytic sterility on the other. As Kim points out for
Collaborative Storytelling, "It considers the rules system to be
outside of the meaningful product. Rules are judged on their
results for shared play, not on how the participants view the
process." This perspective sets aside the impact of system and
theory upon gameplay, asserting player freedom and collaboration
instead. While such a view may seem liberating, and indeed may be
so as against old-fashioned GM authoritarianism, it implicitly
claims that RPG performance occurs outside of structure, not in
reaction to it. But since social structures and presumptive
traditions of play at the least are necessarily at work in RPG
performance, there can be no doubt that gameplay has a structured
context; were this somehow not the case, and gameplay fully
liberated from exterior structures, there could be no possibility
of conflict or its resolution, as no player would have a context
within which to react conflictually. Thus while a particular group
or style may wish to formulate a liberated play modality as ideal,
this has an ideological function and serves to replace one
authoritarian structure (GM authority, game-system authority, etc.)
with yet another. In order for theory to advance the improvement of
gameplay, then, it must work to distinguish between analytical
activities and constructive or synthetic ones, and furthermore
strive to bring this to consciousness within actual play.

Second, RPG theory needs to take seriously the contributions and
insights of other disciplines. Eventually this should be a
reciprocal engagement, but this will require acceptance by academic
and other mainstream intellectual theorists; insofar as RPG theory
can support such a move, it must do so by engaging actively and
constructively with such theorists, in language acceptable to their
traditions. In the meantime, RPG theory must set aside its tendency
to see its analytical object as unique and thus special. William
James reminds us forcefully,

The first thing the intellect does with
an object is to class it along with something else. But any object
that is infinitely important to us and awakens our devotion feels
to us also as if it must be sui generis and unique. Probably
a crab would be filled with a sense of personal outrage if it could
hear us class it without ado or apology as a crustacean, and thus
dispose of it. "I am no such thing," it would say; "I am MYSELF,
MYSELF alone." [28]

James's point is clear: while we are willing to make all sorts
of classifications within RPG's, we tend to think of RPG's
as unique and thus special. But "unique" is simply a logical
category that can be applied to any object of analysis supporting
formulation as a categorical object. If RPG's are unique,
that does not mean they are not ritual, or social behavior; it only
means that they can, from a particular perspective, be formulated
as having some distinctive characteristics. So long as RPG theory
continues to formulate itself otherwise, as unique in an illogical,
strong sense with respect to other behaviors, such theory will
continue to be marked by two unfortunate properties: first, it will
be perpetually in the position of many religious discourses of
having continually to defend its boundaries against the incursions
of other discourses and analytical methods; and second, it will be
incapable of real analytical force because it has built into its
very self-definition essentialist biases that again require
constant and vigilant defense. Arguably, the tendency of much RPG
theory toward rigid hierarchization and toward discourse-circle
hegemony would thus constitute a parallel to more obviously
religious dogmatisms.

Third, RPG theory requires models founded upon a productive and
reproductive, as opposed to interpretive and receptive, situation
of narrativity. Two obvious examples, Kim's already-cited article
and Liz Henry's "Power, Information, and Play in Role Playing
Games,"[29] are admirable moves toward
intelligent application of exterior models, but find themselves at
odds with the purposes of those models. Kim's awareness of this
problem is clear:

There are many differences between RPGs
and books [upon which the formalist model is built], but some are
more subtle than others. It is clear that RPGs have no division
between author and reader. Each participant both expresses and
interprets. Further, this calls into question what the story is.
The answer depends in part on what we define as the discourse or
"text" of RPG play.

These questions are essential, and require answers; indeed, even
cursory examination of recent RPG theory reveals a constant concern
to formulate authorship, textuality, and so forth with respect to
RPG's. But these debates mostly run around in circles, die out, and
get revived with new energy but no really new formulations, with
endless repetitions of the cycle. The problem, in short, is that
formalist and hermeutical models are founded on confronting the
genuinely difficult problem that interpreting a text is not
comparable to a conversational situation; intricate and elegant
strategies are deployed to make sense of how we make sense of text,
if you will, given that it is not conversation. But RPG's
are conversational; the problem does not arise directly. By
attempting to read RPG's through such lenses, we are caught in
circularity: conversations are like books (except that they are not
face-to-face), and books are like RPG's (except that the latter are
face-to-face). Why not drop out the sidetrack and recognize RPG's
as active, dynamic, conversational forms of symbolic
manipulation? I have attempted a beginning here, but a great deal
more needs to be done. [30]

Fourth, stemming from the last point, RPG theory must take into
account the social issues at stake and at work within the smallest,
most apparently arbitrary activities of play. That so much
discussion of "problem games" focuses on social difficulties --
problem players or GM's, paradigmatic clashes, etc. -- reveals that
the central issues in play are social. To the extent that RPG
theory tends to work hierarchically, from top-down (broad
categorical strokes before specific game issues), it mistakes the
actual dynamics by incorporating its analytic framework into
problems needing resolution; this is another means by which
theoretical discourse mystifies itself and its contributions, and
it can most effectively be challenged from within theory
itself.

Fifth, RPG theory must, through engagement with broader social
theory -- particularly the mode of anthropological theory labeled
"practice" -- become aware of symbolic and structural manipulation
as a strategic part of everyday life, a set of techniques also
employed (and refined) within the specifically RPG context. This
occurs at every level of play; there can be no absolute divisions
between in-game and out-of-game, for the same reasons that the only
absolute division between a Catholic Eucharist and a Catholic's
everyday life is an ideological one.

Finally, RPG theory must move beyond hierarchical classification
as a technique. There is no question that classification is a
valid, even necessary goal for serious analytical work. But as in
so many disciplines, most notably the study of religion, the
tendency is to use the scientific character of classification to
construct an aura of objectivity; we see this in discourses that
stress "correctness". The natural upshot of such an endeavor is to
reify the categories as ontologically legitimate, mystify their
constructed character, and thus naturalize the authority-claims
latent within such structures. Classification must recognize that
the object does not exist outside of the construction of taxa;
"religion" or "ritual" do not exist, but are means by which
historically situated and motivated people classify certain
behaviors. Similarly, "RPG" is not a thing, a singular object,
unique and discrete from others, and Narrativist orientations do
not differ from Simulationist or Gamist ones except insofar as we
construct them so. Classification is the basis of
comparison, not of truth or certainty. Until RPG theory
takes on board serious recognition of its comparative nature, it
will remain an ideology and not a science.[31]

The Forge has hosted lengthy
discussions of how RPG play is like playing in a band (with the
gamemaster playing bass), how RPG play is like playing a pinball
machine, and so on. Examination of the range of such discussions
will show the two discursive thrusts: the drive for clarification
and precision in the metaphor, and the extension of the analogical
range. As a rule, such discussions end when those who find the
analogy helpful have formulated a version that is clear to them
personally, when those who do not find it so grow tired of trying,
and when most become frustrated with those who try to extend the
analogy to ludicrous, literalist extremes. These discussions are
not worthless -->analytical models, such metaphors must be
formulated rigorously, with their boundaries precisely set. For
more casual discussion, on the other hand, one of the best
qualities of a forum like the Forge is that it permits this sort of
open speculation and play; indeed, a close analysis of the ludic
dimension in such RPG discourse would be valuable for understanding
the interrelations of RPG play and theory.

On the issue of the "unique" as
special, and its problematic applications to serious analysis
within classificatory discourse, see Jonathan Z. Smith, "Fences and
Neighbors." Imagining Religion (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1982), 1-18.

See Ronald L. Grimes,
Beginnings in Ritual Studies (Washington, D.C.: University
Press of America, 1982); Victor W. Turner, Dramas, Fields and
Metaphors (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell UP, 1974); Turner, From
Ritual to Theater: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York:
Performing Arts Journal Publications, 1982). Essentially all of
Grimes' work work since the late 1970's fits the model am
describing here, as part of what he has dubbed "ritual studies".
Turner's work, however, took a strictly performative and dramatic
turn; his earliest works, while excellent, do not directly fit this
model, and can only be made to accord with the performative
perspective with considerable hindsight and, I think,
distortion.

The French idea of bricolage is not directly translatable into English; we simply have no category quite like it. The bricoleur is a hobbyist of a sort, but elevated to a high artistic level. For the Lévi-Strauss formulation, see The Savage Mind, chapter 1, "The Science of the Concrete"; the translation is execrable, and those with a good command of French would be well advised to read La pensée sauvage, chapter 1, "La science du concret."

I shall not go into detail on
hermeneutics, as it is founded primarily on philosophical
negotiation of the problems of interpretive reception, problems
relevant but not central to the analysis of RPG's. On this model,
see Paul Ricoeur, Hermeneutics and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1981). See also Umberto Eco, Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1992); and Hans Georg Gadamer, Philosophical Hermeneutics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977). Also useful, though less approachable, are Eco's The Limits of Interpretation (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1994) and A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1979).

A central tenet of hegemonic
Forge theory.

See Mike Holmes, "Mike's
Standard Rant #3: Combat System" (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=2024). Holmes' essential point is this: "If you don't want combat to be the focus of a game, do not include special rules for it. Especially if you don't include special rules about anything else." This "standard rant" has been discussed periodically on the Forge.

It should be pointed out that
the Forge "system matters" principle does not claim that other
elements do not matter; the question is one of emphasis, and is
here an analytical distinction rather than a polemical one.

Jonathan Z. Smith, "Fences
and Neighbors," Imagining Religion: From Babylon to
Jonestown (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 1-18.
The polythetic system is hardly perfectly objective, but as Smith
argues persuasively, it is less inherently inclined toward
normative claims and slippages than the monothetic, taxonomic sorts
of systems founded on hierarchy.

Although see his Deeply
Into the Bone: Reinventing Rites of Passage (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), the purpose of
which is explicitly to formulate ritual theory as a constructive
discourse for people wishing to invent or reinvent their own rites
of passage.

The commensuration of ritual
discourses and discourses about ritual, between ritual in fact as
analytical discourse and academic analysis as in fact ritual, is
outside the scope of the present paper. The argument, founded upon
a grammatological engagement with practice, performance, and
structural analysis, juxtaposed to early modern magical practice
and the theoretical dramaturgy of Zeami's Nö, will be part of the
core of my book Magic in Theory and Practice, where I do not
connect it with RPG's per se.

Arnold van Gennep, The
Rites of Passage, trans. Monika B. Vizedon and Gabrielle L.
Caffee (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961); Victor Turner,
"Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Phase in Rites de
Passage," Proceedings of the American Ethnological
Society, Symposium on New Approaches to the Study of Religion,
1964:4-20; Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and
Anti-Structure (Aldine de Gruyter, 1969); Turner, The Forest
of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu Ritual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP,
1970).

"Railroading," for which
there are numerous more or less equivalent terms, is the practice
of a GM essentially scripting the majority of plot events and
structures within a given play session or series of such. For
example, the GM may decide, prior to play, that he wants the PC
characters, all cowboys, to engage in an OK Corral-style gunfight
as the climax of play; when the PC's choose (via their players, of
course) to ride out of town to investigate a lost silver mine, the
GM uses various strategies to prevent them from doing this, because
he needs them in town in order for the gunfight to take place. Such
strategies range from subtle hints to overt assertions of
authority; a possible example would be to inform the players that
several of their horses are lame and cannot be ridden, then to have
no horses available at the town stable, then to ensure that nobody
in town will sell his or her own horse. By the time the players
have negotiated this many options, it is generally clear to
everyone (though very often not stated) that no matter what they
do, the PC's will be prevented from riding out of town.

This point has been
emphasized in various RPG discussions. One common suggestion is
that if, for some reason, the GM actually needs her players
to follow a set of railroad tracks, the GM should react to repeated
attempts to jump the rails out-of-game, by saying something like,
"Okay, guys. I'm really not that prepared, actually, and I kind of
need you to go and do X. Is that okay?" While this may act
practically to achieve the desired effect, it depends upon the
rigidity of in-game/out-of-game divisions to acquire efficacy, and
cannot in itself be deemed a resolution of a more fundamental
difficulty.

I would agree with these
thinkers that people never think truly independently, that is
unconstrained in any manner by encultured structures; the point
here is that even constrained thought and action has tremendous
flexibility and ranges of possibility, and is not simply scripted
or railroaded in the RPG sense.

This division is reproduced
in strictly academic contexts not only with reference to ritual but
also to myth: myths are not "really" myths if they are invented for
that purpose (whatever such a purpose might be), just as rituals as
not "really" rituals if they are consciously invented so. The
intrusion of dubious ideas of consciousness, ontology, and category
only deflect from the central point: academics by formulating
critique in this fashion reproduce the ideology of authenticity
that authorizes and legitimates certain religious behaviors as
stable and non-inventive, as against the "wannabe" inventions of
recent "flakes" and "crazies". In a sense, we might see the
division here as between those who are creative within an
authorized framework and those who create their own framework. The
critique thus becomes reflexive, as indeed we should have suspected
it always was: the academic is really saying that she herself, by
being creative (doing new analytical work) within an authorized or
traditional framework (academic and disciplinary traditional
discourse) is legitimate and critical, while "crazies" (those
proposing unexpected critiques) fall outside the authorized
framework (do not have Ph.D.s, for example) and thus need not be
taken seriously.

It would be interesting to
consider whether the apparent (though entirely anecdotal) overlap
between RPG communities and Neopagan ones might be at least partly
rooted here. In the absence of serious sociological data, I suspect
that an effective technique here would be close analysis of White
Wolf's various Neopagan-oriented games (especially Werewolf: The
Apocalypse and several of the Ars Magica supplements)
with respect to ritual/magical creativity, criticism of religion,
and criticism of what the authors refer to as "traditional" games
in their explanations of how their games are special and
different.

This is a purely hypothetical
construct; I know of no such actual response among Bemba, and the
example is deliberately over-simplified for heuristic reasons.

Lévi-Strauss, The Savage Mind, 30-32; the reference on the Gahuku-Gama is to K. E. Read, "Leadership and Consensus in a New Guinea Society." American
Anthropologist 61.3 (1959): 429.

William James, The
Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green,
and Co., 1902), 9. See also Jonathan Z. Smith, "Fences and
Neighbors" for a penetrating discussion of the "unique" in
theoretical discourses.

The same point might be made
about Edwards's dependence upon Lajos Egri's constructive models
for creative writing, models poorly suited to analytical
purposes. In essence, Edwards asserts that Egri's models fit RPG's,
except that the product is entirely different, authorship is
shared, and really the Threefold Model is analytic rather than
constructive. More recently, Edwards has noted that Egri's model
(especially with regard to "premise") only applies properly to
Narrativist play.

Here I take science to be a
reflexive and self-critical attempt to differentiate and understand
its analytical objects. There can be no question that modern
science, in the usual sense, does not always fulfill these
criteria, in particular because it tends to claim objectivity
instead of constructed reflexivity. But given the need for such
reflexive awareness, the goals and ideals of science remain worthy
of theoretical discourse; see the introduction and first chapters
of Bourdieu's The Logic of Practice for a brilliant (if dense)
formulation of scientific analysis that recognizes and takes
seriously its own constructed nature. For comparison as a discourse
and a method, Jonathan Z. Smith's Imagining Religion should be the starting-point of any attempt at theoretical construction.